The present invention relates to an identification tag, and more particularly to an electronic identification tag that is very thin and readily used upon luggage.
For a variety of reasons, most especially increasing incidents of terrorist incidents resulting from the planting of explosives within luggage aboard passenger planes and trains, it is desirable to reliably, quickly, and inexpensively identify and track luggage items placed aboard common carriers. Also, a common complaint of passengers using common carriers is the frustration of misdirected, lost, or delayed luggage. Both the security of common carriers, and the elimination of the problem of lost luggage, are promoted by reliable identification of luggage items. Identifying luggage and other items in passenger terminals and aboard planes and trains historically has been performed primarily by means of simple printed hang tags affixed to the luggage and bearing the owner's name and address, and occasionally the logo of the common carrier company. Hang tags printed solely with the passenger's name assist in reuniting lost or delayed luggage with its rightful owner, but do little to avoid initial misdirection. In recent years, common carriers have used paper tags imprinted with laser-readable bar codes as a means for identifying individual items of luggage. Even more recently, the printed hang tag identification method has been supplemented by security requirements compelling passengers to present photo identification at the time of luggage check in.
Traditional luggage identification systems have suffered from the drawbacks inherent in their simplicity. Printed hang tags require manual inspection by security personnel, an extremely time-consuming process. Even optical bar code identification systems require that airport or security personnel handle the tag of each piece of luggage in order to pass the bar-coded tag in the appropriate orientation past an optical reader. As a result, it is impracticable to optically "scan" an individual item of luggage more than once during a passenger's journey. Also, printed hang tags, even when supplemented with passenger identification programs, are vulnerable to fraud and mistake.
It has been proposed to use small radio transmitters in an effort to increase the reliability and efficiency of luggage identification and tracking. It is known in the art to attach a radio transmitter to luggage to send an identifying signal to one or more receivers. It is contemplated that radio receivers will increase the rapidity and reliability of identifying each item in a large-volume stream of luggage by eliminating the need to manually handle each piece of luggage, and reduce the role of human visual inspections fraught with error. Radio transmitters, in conjunction with digital data processors, provide a means for improving luggage tracking and identification.
However, transmitter devices for use on luggage heretofore have generally suffered from one or more serious drawbacks, most notably bulkiness and high cost. Bulkiness has been the result of the size of the electronic components of the receiver and, frequently, the need for the transmitter to be accompanied by a self-contained power source such as a battery. Additionally, bulky identification devices are not conducive to dual use, for instance, the physical combination of the transmitter with traditional visual or more recent electronic optical identification labels. It heretofore also has been difficult to produce an electronic identification tag with a small yet functional antenna capable of being contained within a paper hang tag.
Ideally, an electronic identification tag has a sufficient transmission range to permit its signal to be received and processed from a distance. Many known devices utilizing radio transmission have comparatively abbreviated effective transmission ranges, thus requiring manual passage of the receiver "reader" near, for instance, less than 0.30 meter to the tag.
High cost has also hindered the development of viable electronic identification tags. An electronic hang tag ideally must be so inexpensive as to be a single-use device. An expensive transmitter must be reused on the luggage of multiple passengers on successive trips in order economically to recover the transmitter cost. Transmitter reuse thus becomes extremely undesirable due to the need to recover each device at the conclusion of a passenger's trip, re-distribute the device to a new point of origin for attachment to a second piece of luggage, etc.
Finally, known radio transmitter identification tag devices constitute another distinct item for attachment to a piece of luggage, separate from currently used bar-code tags. Separately attaching, and subsequently separately reading, the transmitter tag, apart from the bar-code tag engenders undesirably inefficient duplication of effort, leading to a considerable loss of time and therefor increased cost.
Accordingly, a need remains for an electronic identification tag that is inexpensive, reliable even at increased receiver ranges, and is very thin or small in order to be integrated within existing visual and/or optical tag devices.